UFC 146 preview: What does history tell us about Dos Santos vs. Mir?

That Frank Mir is a huge underdog leading into a title fight with heavyweight champ Junior Dos Santos should come as no surprise.

Get ahold of a stats sheet provided by his employer in advance of UFC 146, which takes place tonight at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, and the most successful heavyweight in UFC history sure looks like a long shot.

But while most of the numbers go in Dos Santos’ favor, he comes up short in the area that could be most revealing about a matchup with Mir (16-5 MMA, 14-5 UFC). Simply put, Dos Santos (14-1 MMA, 8-0 UFC) hasn’t had to do much of what Mir is really good at, which is grabbing limbs and twisting them to snap, tap or not.

UFC 146’s main card, which features nothing but heavyweights, airs live on pay-per-view while FX and Facebook carries preliminary-card bouts.

A small caveat: The stats quoted in this article are provided by the UFC’s official stat provider, FightMetric, and reflect only the UFC fights of Dos Santos and Mir.

With that said, Dos Santos has spent 96.8 percent of his time in the octagon – and this is eight fights over nearly four years – on his feet. He has defended a grand total of two takedown attempts, only one of which was initiated by a man with the qualifications to do so.

Here’s the rub: That man, former Division II wrestling champ Shane Carwin, probably wasn’t in the frame of mind to put forth his best effort. His mind was hazy from the fists that slammed into his head, nearly knocked him out, and left him a bloody mess when he fought Dos Santos at UFC 131.

The other, jiu-jitsu specialist Gabriel Gonzaga, got one shot off before his brain was concussed at UFC on Versus 1.

So Dos Santos hasn’t really needed much in the way of takedown defense. He’s in record-holder territory (84.6 percent compared with a UFC best of 89.5 percent) because there just aren’t that many at-bats, so to speak. Combined with his striking accuracy (eighth best in UFC history and first in heavyweight history) and striking defense (on par with the top five in heavyweight history, the UFC notes somewhat vaguely in its breakdown), he hasn’t been pushed on the mat.

Of course, when you knock out someone, as Dos Santos has done five times (tied for third in the UFC’s heavyweight history), you can forget the jiu-jitsu.

What’s Mir’s history of avoiding big punchers? Not distinguished, as it turns out. His 40.5 percent striking defense is almost 20 percentage points below the UFC average, and the number of strikes he absorbs per minute in the cage is 35 percent higher than the average.

Looking at Mir’s career, however, he’s fared well against several seasoned strikers. He stopped Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (in their first meeting) with strikes, floored Cheick Kongo with a punch before locking in the submission, and knocked out a listless Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic.

Two of Mir’s TKO losses – against Marcio Cruz and Brandon Vera – came during an admittedly awful stretch in his career in which he lost focus and didn’t do many of the things a fighter needs to do to compete at a high level. Another two – Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin – arose out of severe tactical mistakes (lingering beneath Lesnar at UFC 100 and against the cage with Carwin at UFC 111). His first came early in his career when he was a near-pure submission guy.

None of this is to say that Mir isn’t at a severe disadvantage against a fighter such as Dos Santos. The takedowns he so desperately needs likely won’t come by way of a power double-leg takedown as they would from a wrestling-based fighter such as Carwin or Velasquez. He hasn’t had a full training camp for Saturday’s fight. And there’s no stat for the pounds per square inch of Dos Santos’ punches – yet – that measure the toll possible on his body.

The losses, however, provide some shading to the dreadful picture on paper. As Mir pointed out, Dos Santos hasn’t had a full camp to prepare for him either, and his southpaw stance changes the tools available during the fight. When Mir gets the fight to the ground, he is the best submission artist the UFC heavyweight division has seen. He is tied with two lightweights, Kenny Florian and Nate Diaz, for the most wins by tap-out in UFC history (eight), and in a rematch, he recently broke the arm of the guy who helped teach Dos Santos jiu-jitsu: Nogueira.

Such X-factors are sorely needed to keep things interesting.

Other main card fights:

Cain Velasquez (9-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) vs. Antonio Silva (16-3 MMA, 0-0 UFC): Velasquez returns to action after a quick knockout loss to Dos Santos that stripped him of the UFC belt. Silva, a former EliteXC champ, makes his octagon debut after a 3-2 run in Strikeforce that was capped off by a first-round KO loss to Daniel Cormier. The now-Strikeforce grand-prix champ’s skill set mirrors Velasquez’s – as well it should, seeing that they are training partners – so many of the same problems that Silva faced with Cormier will be the same for Velasquez. Velasquez is an expert ground-and-pound artist and ferocious on the feet. The difference, if you buy Silva’s assessment, is that he’s invested in this fight whereas he was coasting against Cormier and paid the price. We’ll see tonight.

Roy Nelson (16-7 MMA, 3-3 UFC) vs. Dave Herman (21-3 MMA, 1-1 UFC): Two characters outside the cage, these heavyweights have far different styles inside. Nelson is a big puncher with smothering top control and a jaw of granite. Herman incorporates a more diverse striking attack that includes knees and kicks that make him as exciting as he is fallible. He’ll need a knee straight to the jaw to stop Nelson, who’s likely to look for his overhand right en route to pounding out a win from top position. Herman’s ground game hasn’t been tested against a fighter with the grappling skills of Nelson, and that may be his downfall.

Stipe Miocic (8-0 MMA, 2-0 UFC) vs. Shane Del Rosario (11-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC): Heavyweights with great future promise, and perhaps a matchup too early for both. The unbeaten Del Rosario has shown great poise as a striker and showed off his submission prowess by tapping Lavar Johnson before a car accident endangered his career. Miocic, a wrestler/boxer, has proven to be a handful on the feet, though it’s unclear how he’ll contend with Del Rosario’s kicks. Miocic may shoot for a takedown and keep his elbows in if he gets tagged early, which would ensure a pedestrian decision win. Del Rosario’s layoff is a big unknown in the shape of the fight.

Stefan Struve (23-5 MMA, 7-3 UFC) vs. Lavar Johnson (17-5 MMA, 2-0 UFC): Puncher’s chance couldn’t be any more accurate to describe this matchup. Johnson has little of the finesse that Struve has in striking, but he makes up for it with brute aggression. If he can catch Struve moving backward, it’s his fight to win. Struve, however, is the guy with more to lose, and that means he’ll circle, snipe and take the fight down as soon as possible. There, Johnson is in constant danger. He could pound Struve from the top – anyone remember UFC 99? – but if he’s on bottom, he’s in big trouble.

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